Big Battery EVs Under Fire

The latest news from the world of electric cars can't be good for EV battery makers.

First, there was Toyota Motor Corp.'s recent announcement that it will cut its sales targets for the all-electric eQ city car in the coming year. In truth, Toyota's planned sales numbers for the eQ had already been miniscule, but the remarks that accompanied the announcement were the real problem. According to an article from Reuters.com, the giant automaker admitted it had misread the ability of battery technology to meet consumer demands.

"The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society's needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge," said Takeshi Uchiyamada, Toyota's vice chairman, in the Reuters story.

Then there was the September report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which questioned the value of tax credits for electric vehicles. The report, titled "Effects of Federal Tax Credits for the Purchase of Electric Vehicles," took special aim at pure electric cars with big batteries.

"Assuming that everything else is equal, the larger an electric vehicle's battery capacity, the greater its cost disadvantage relative to conventional vehicles -- and the larger the tax credit needed to make it cost competitive," the report stated. "Conversely, electric vehicles with small batteries are more cost-competitive."

Finally, there were the recent stories about the Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model S. Articles from greecarreports.com chronicled an ongoing battle between Nissan and some owners of its Leaf electric cars, as a result of those owners complaining that their batteries were suffering from premature range loss in hot climates. Meanwhile, a story in The Wall Street Journal suggested that Tesla Motors Inc., which makes electric cars with giant lithium-ion battery packs, warned investors that it is cutting its revenue targets for 2012 because it has fallen behind its production goals for the Model S electric car.

Some of this could be written off to the media's over-zealous, microscopic examination of the electric car business, of course. But not all. You can't blame the media when the sales figures of electric cars are so disturbingly low. The Leaf is a case in point: Nissan sold only 395 Leafs in June, followed by 685 in July, according to greencarreports.com.

The CBO report on federal tax credits and electric vehicles is incomplete and relies on poor assumptions. They use no actual statistic from the 40,000 PHEV and BEV's (AEV) that are mentioned in the report.
- It assume that the average range of an all-electric is 55 miles (pg. 32)
- It assumes that EV's are only be charged once per day (pg. 7)
- It assumes that EV's are driven fewer miles than an ICE would be by the same driver
The report was obviously written by people who are only academically familiar with electric vehicles. Who chose not to use available real-world data and instead chose "CBO assumptions."
Toyota just does not want to build an EV, they stated that they were focusing on hybrids-only a couple of years ago.
With the failure of the EV Project, the slow roll-out of infrastructure has hindered the demand of the cars. Constant misinformation supported by very deep pockets is another challenge. However, as I continue driving my Nissan LEAF in my daily commute alongside the gas-burners, people will realize that there is a lot of money to be saved by owning an EV.

Chuck, the situation with battery packs seems to be following the trajectory of nuclear fusion. Let me explain. The situation in fusion is that we know we can generate energy from it, but can it be sustained and can it be better than break even. There is even a big international project underway. It took them something like ten years to decide where to put it. The point is, that while we think it can be done, the uncertianty is so great that no commercial venture would approach it. In fact, it looks like no single government has the funds or will to do it alone either.

Battery technology is the same. There are commerial companies working on it, but most, if not all, get direct government subsidies. There is still no guarnteed way to get to a battery cost and density that would make all electric vehicles a true competitor. Sometimes these scientifc breakthroughs don't come along, or come along too late to "save" a particular industry.

The final piece of the puzzle is charging time. What happens when you are running low on charge. Even if there is a high voltage charging station nearby you are talking a couple of hours. If you are running low on gasoline, you pull into a gas station, of which there are many, and in a few minutes you are on your way with a "full charge". There has been talk of having battery swap stations for decades. I mean decades. Ever since the first electric vehicle mandates in California this has been a solution discussed by the industry. What that would require is a standardized battery pack. Perhaps you could have a small number. Just think of that in terms of the EV car industry today.

So, as I have been advocating on this site for a while, we need to look to solutions that improve our efficiency while keeping total cost of ownership at current levels or better.

Some cars are more reliable than others, but even the vehicles at the bottom of this year’s Consumer Reports reliability survey are vastly better than those of 20 years ago in the key areas of powertrain and hardware, experts said this week.

As it does every year, Consumers Union recently surveyed its members on the reliability of their vehicles. This year, it collected data on approximately 1.1 million cars and trucks, categorizing the members’ likes and dislikes, not only of their vehicles, but of the vehicle sub-systems, as well.

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

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